the salt & pepper diaries

It’s so good to know what the President orders when entertaining a fellow world leader - also so good for the Guardian to think we give a f***.

The menu for the recent ‘Brown / Bush’ summit.

This week July 25-July 31

• 1 Le Petite Maison - fine French cuisine
• 2 Olivomare - Sardinian seafood
• 3 Pinchito Tapas -Brighton Tapas arrives in Shoreditch
• 4 Peyton & Byrne - Tottenham Court Roads bakery heads up to the Wellcome Collection
• 5 The Larder - quality meat and sea food, but not a big enough kitchen!

Thanks again to the TO team.

Well, The Larder has been sitting in the Time Out ‘Hot Tips’ for the last three weeks and it looks pretty good from the outside - a well designed warehouse of a restaurant. However, it seems there eyes were too big for their kitchen. I went down on Saturday night at 8.30 - the place was one fifth full, if that, and when we asked for a table for two, we were told that the kitchen was too busy and couldn’t handle any orders for 30 mins - could we come back later or have a drink. We left.

I hope this is teething problems for their sake, as for a new restaurant, built to cater for the flood refugees of Gloucestershire, this was a poor show! To make sure I wasn’t being unfair in my initial judgement, I had a quick look around and all tables that were in had food and none were large parties.

I will return and fingers crossed the kitchen will be able to handle the rush of a two table booking. More to follow.

Steve Plotnicki of Opinionated About Dining, has just released the results of his latest restaurant survey - The 50 Most Recommended Restuarants in North America and Europe.

This is Steve’s answer to flawed or inadequate dining guides and is a compilation of surveys from 175 diners drawn from members of the Opinionated About Dining forums, friends of Steve’s and acquaintances who are passionate about dining out and Internet food bloggers who were sent blind solicitations.

All participants were asked to rate restaurants on the following criteria:

Must Go
Recommended +++
Recommended ++
Recommended +
Acceptable
Can’t Recommend
Must Avoid

It’s a great list, compiled by real food enthusiasts with their likes, dislikes, preferences and biases included. The collective guide really does make up a valuable alternative to the ‘official’ editions from the likes of Zagats, Time Out etc.

It’s also free - thanks Steve!

Look out for more lists very soon.

A plug for an old friend here - Neil Walkington. We bumped into each other a few evenings ago and it turns out he’s just opened what looks like a pretty good new restaurant in Farringdon - St.Germain. I say ‘looks like’, as I’ve not had a chance to get down there yet, but it won’t be long. If it’s anything like the places he’s been involved with in the past, it will be well worth the visit…

Review to be posted shortly.